'Game of Thrones' reaches its end, with one or two shocks left

After eight seasons and 73 episodes, HBO's long-running smash "Game of Thrones" came to its conclusion on Sunday night, with one more shocking demise and an unlikely character named as king.

With its last episode, which ran roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes, the medieval fantasy series, based on the novels of George R.R. Martin, wrapped up the storyline for more than a dozen characters and intertwining plots.

The show's fierce competition for the fictional Iron Throne -- the seat for the show's ruler, made out of hundreds of swords -- ended first with a death, and an unexpected choice to rule the show's fictional kingdom of Westeros.

It brings to a conclusion a show that became the cornerstone of HBO's primetime offerings, but its final season was also its most divisive, with both fans and critics finding specific plot developments -- particularly its handling of one of the primary characters -- troubling.

The final season has broken records for HBO, which says it has so far averaged 43 million viewers per episode in the United States alone -- an increase of 10 million over Season 7 in 2017.

Most notable in fans' criticism was the malevolent turn by Emilia Clarke's Daenerys Targaryen, the "Dragon Queen," who used her dragon to lay waste to the show's fictional capital after her enemies had surrendered.

The move angered fans, as the episode, titled "The Bells," currently garners the weakest ratings amongst all episodes in the show's eight-season run on Rottentomatoes.com, which aggregates critics' reviews.

Clarke's character had engaged in brutal actions in previous seasons, similar to other leaders depicted in the story, but the decision to kill tens of thousands of innocent people was viewed by many as too drastic based on the character's previous actions.

From its ragged beginnings -- the show's original pilot was never aired, instead undergoing substantial re-shoots and re-casting of several characters -- it became a cultural phenomenon. Its budgets grew, with a per-episode cost in its last season running as high as $15 million per episode, according to Variety. It also won numerous primetime television Emmy Awards, including three awards for Best Drama.

It became known for unexpected, nerve-wracking moments, including the first season's death of Eddard Stark, the nobleman played by Sean Bean, featured heavily in the show's marketing campaign, and Season 3's "Red Wedding," a massacre of critical characters in the show's fictional wars that author Martin drew from medieval Scottish history.

HBO already is in the planning stages for a prequel series to take place thousands of years prior to the show's fictional timeline, while its creators, Dan Weiss and David Benioff, are slated to make the next series of "Star Wars" films. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'Now our watch is ended': History-making 'Game of Thrones' wraps

LOS ANGELES -- After eight epic years of chivalry, sex, death and dragons, "Game of Thrones" fans worldwide have just 79 pulsating minutes remaining Sunday to get their final fix in one of the most hotly anticipated events in TV history.

The blood-spattered tale of noble families vying for the Iron Throne has just one episode to go and buzz is at fever pitch for a ratings juggernaut that has demolished audience records like a Dothraki barbarian finishing off a skillet of horse meat. 

"We want people to love it. It matters a lot to us. We've spent 11 years doing this," Dan Weiss, who directed the 73rd and final episode with fellow showrunner David Benioff, told Entertainment Weekly. 

While many will watch at home, perhaps with a goblet of Dornish red wine and a punnet of Braavosi cockles, thousands will celebrate and mourn the show's denouement at viewing parties in bars, banqueting halls and backyards from Alaska to Armenia. 

One of the darkest and most controversial primetime series ever made, "GoT" has been the target of criticism over the years for senseless violence and its repeated use of rape as a dramatic device.

Hacked, burned, flayed

The scriptwriters have brutalized women, killed children, depicted graphic sex and had their characters hacked, stabbed, flayed, poisoned, decapitated, burned alive, eye-gouged and eviscerated -- all in glorious close-up.

Even principal character Jon Snow (Kit Harington), whose fellow Night's Watch troops would chant "And now his watch is ended" at comrades' funerals, suffered the indignity of being briefly dead after a particularly violent quarrel.

The adult themes have not deterred fans, however, nor the industry itself, which has seen fit to make it the most decorated series in history, with 47 Emmy Awards.

Airing in 170 countries under its portentous tagline, "Winter is Coming," the show is also the most expensive ever, with a budget of $15 million per episode in its final run. 

The season seven finale set an all-time US record for premium cable TV with 16.5 million people watching live or streaming on the day of transmission and 15 million more tuning in later.

Viewing records also tumbled across the world, with Britain's Sky Atlantic and OCS in France showing episodes in the middle of the night in sync with their US premieres.

Season 6 was the first to move beyond the source material, George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels, and carve its own path.

Critics said it marked a return to form, with the narrative allowing female characters to demonstrate complexity and moral agency lacking in some of the earlier seasons.

The shortened final two seasons have been more of a mixed bag, with many fans furious over what they consider poor writing.

Mass-murdering madness

Most controversial has been the rapid descent into mass-murdering madness by Emilia Clarke's fan favorite Daenerys Targaryen, arguably the lead character in an enormous ensemble that has called on the services of such luminaries as Charles Dance, Sean Bean, Jim Broadbent and Diana Rigg.

A Change.org petition called "Remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers" had passed one million signatures with more than 24 hours to go until Sunday's finale. 

Assuming there is no do-over, the biggest mystery of all remains who will be sitting on the Iron Throne and ruling Westeros when "Game of Thrones" comes to an end.

To throw hackers and pirates off the scent, Benioff and Weiss shot several versions of the final episode, a tactic already used for "The Sopranos" and "Breaking Bad."

Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, has admitted that even she was fooled into believing a fake version of the ending.

Martin will himself discover the on-screen ending of his long-running masterwork before he has had a chance to conclude the fantasy on paper.

The plot lines for his long-awaited final two novels in the series -- "The Winds of Winter" and "A Dream of Spring" -- were adapted to the screen based on outlines Martin gave the show's writers. But there is no guarantee they will stick to his plan.

"Obviously, I wished I finished these books sooner so the show hadn't gotten ahead of me. I never anticipated that," Martin once told an interviewer.

The "Game of Thrones" finale premieres on HBO at 9 p.m. in the US on both coasts (Monday morning in Manila).

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'Blame of Thrones': Fans lament rushed final GoT season

NEW YORK, United States – As "Game of Thrones" suits up for one last swordfight, a phalanx of enraged viewers large enough to flatten the massed armies of Westeros is voicing its displeasure over what they consider a botched ending to the beloved show -- with some even clamoring for a do-over.

Since its first episode eight years ago the HBO show about noble families vying for the Iron Throne has picked up just about every award going on the way to becoming a global ratings smash and a cultural phenomenon.

But its legacy is under threat from an increasingly vocal section of fans furious over what they consider poor writing in the shortened final two seasons, after the script had moved beyond the source novels by American writer George R.R. Martin.

A Change.org petition called "Remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers" was approaching 850,000 signatures early Friday, ahead of Sunday's finale.

"There's been a lot of negativity about the windup, but I think it's just because people don't want ANY ending," tweeted horror author Stephen King, one of the show's most high-profile fans.

"But you know what they say: All good things..."

One source of discontent is a dramatically sped-up narrative arc that has seen central character Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) descend suddenly and incongruously into atrocity-committing madness.

"Turning one of the top two heroes in the game into a villain is something that you have to really set up straight... to have the fan base just go along with it," said entertainment host A. Ron Hubbard on his top-rated "Game of Thrones: The Podcast."

"It's just that I don't think they did the job particularly well."

Other fans are equally bewildered by the moral regression of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's Jaime Lannister -- an unambiguous bad guy back in 2011 whose redemptive arc over seven seasons was one of the most interesting aspects of the show's scrupulous, patient plotting.

"It feels like some of the characters' arcs are false because they're not given enough time to play out," said University of Northern Illinois medieval history professor Valerie Garver, who accused showrunners David Benioff and D.B Weiss of "rushing" the truncated, 6-episode final season.

MILLIONS OF SICK DAYS

The effect has been to lower expectations to such an extent that many fans are complaining about a denouement they have yet to even see.

"I'm really disappointed in Next Sunday night's finale of 'Game of Thrones,'" joked Brent Spiner, who played android Data in "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

More than 100,000 people voted on the Internet Movie Database to give Season 8's penultimate episode 6.1 out of 10, a harsh rating for a show that had never rated lower than 8.1 in previous seasons.

"This show is just so good and has been so important that even if most people are upset with the ending I think still it will be held up as a show that was pretty extraordinary," said Garver.

And if the social media backlash looks harsh, it is worth remembering that the vast majority of any show's viewers do not immediately take to Twitter with their comments if they liked what they saw.

The proof of this can be found in the "Game of Thrones" audience figures, which hit a record 12.5 million live US viewers for the most recent episode -- with a further 6 million watching later.

For perspective, one of the show's nearest premium cable rivals, Showtime's "Homeland," managed 1.2 million viewers per episode in 2018 and "The Sopranos," regarded as HBO's greatest show, would pull in 11 million a week at its 2002 peak.

There's little reason to expect anything but phenomenal figures for the feature-length "GoT" finale, with an estimated 10.7 million Americans expected to skip work the following morning to catch up, according to a survey by The Workforce Institute at Kronos.

'ASH AND BRICK'

Back in the fictional continent of Westeros, the biggest mystery of "Game of Thrones" remains: who will be sitting on the Iron Throne as ruler of the Seven Kingdoms when the curtain comes down?

British bookmaker William Hill has 20-year-old Isaac Hempstead Wright's Bran Stark as favorite, closely followed by his fictional sister Sansa, played by Sophie Turner.

That assumes, of course, that the Iron Throne still exists after Mother of Dragons Daenerys went full "Mad Queen" last week -- torching most of Dubrovnik, the real-life Croatian double for the Westerosi royal seat of King's Landing.

"The Iron Throne is very much gone, as is most of the population in the capital of the Seven Kingdoms," the bookmaker said on its website.

"Is it actually possible for anyone to inherit a mountain of ash and brick?"

source: news.abs-cbn.com

5 financial lessons from 'Game of Thrones'

(The writer is a Reuters contributor. The opinions expressed are his own.)

NEW YORK - If you ever find yourself at a fan convention for the popular HBO series "Game of Thrones," look at the person next to you.

He or she just might control billions.

With nearly 20 million total viewers for the series, whose fifth season debuts on April 12, and 25 million copies in print of the George R.R. Martin books, the "Game of Thrones" franchise does not just appeal to comic-book geeks.

Powerful money managers get drawn in too, like Gavin Baker, head of Fidelity's $13 billion OTC Portfolio fund. Since Baker is conquering 98 percent of his peers over the last five years, investors should be curious about the financial lessons he and others are drawing from "Game of Thrones."

Here are a few of the key takeaways, other than the ultimate lesson of the bloody series: valar morghulis ("All men must die").

Lesson One: Listen for weak signals
"Be open to evidence that suggests that your view of the world is wrong," advises Baker. In the seven kingdoms of Westeros, the powers-that-be tend to dismiss the dangers gathering around them, such as the mysterious and vicious White Walkers to the north, and the fire-breathing dragons that are growing across the seas.

In the next book - which Martin is toiling on right now - one can only assume that these adversaries will come back to haunt those in power.

Lesson Two: Make dispassionate decisions

As behavioral economists always tell us, mixing emotion and investing is a bad idea.

So it is in Westeros. When the Stark family goes to war with the Lannisters, Robb Stark falls in love and breaks his previous engagement to the daughter of a powerful ally. "Meanwhile, his rival, Tywin Lannister, makes very few emotional decisions," says Baker.

Guess who comes out ahead?

Stark falls after being stabbed in the heart.

"He makes an emotional decision; that is the reason he dies," Baker says.

Lesson Three: Leverage what you have

Near the beginning of the series, Daenerys Targaryen - the so-called Mother of Dragons - has "no money at all," says Michael Anderson, a financial planner with True North Advisors in Dallas. She is widowed and wandering foreign deserts.

What she does have, though, is a fast-growing trio of dragons, the likes of which have not been seen in the kingdom for many years. She also boasts a powerful family name, being descended from a line of previous rulers.

As a result she "leverages those assets into huge gains," says Anderson. Specifically, a fierce army that takes over several cities and threatens to return and take over Westeros itself.

Lesson Four: Too much debt is a killer
You might think that power in Westeros resides with the crown, and its gilded capital of King's Landing. Or perhaps with the Lannister family, thanks to their land holdings and famous taste for gold (Hence the popular saying, "rich as a Lannister.")

But according to some experts, real power lies somewhere else entirely: with the Iron Bank of Braavos, in a city across the seas.

"It is absolutely the power behind the throne," says Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor at the University of Virginia who teaches a course on "Game of Thrones."

"Its bankers are not sentimental, and just want to back who is going to win.

"When you are in deep debt to the Iron Bank, it can weaken your hold on the throne. And when you can't get any more loans from them, that becomes a problem."

Lesson Five: Hard assets matter

Being a favorite of the Iron Bank of Braavos is one path to wealth. Another path: real estate.

To wit, the Tyrell family controls much of southern Westeros, and their land is essentially the breadbasket for the seven kingdoms. They, in turn, help prop up the Lannister regime, even funding a wedding between the two families.

"Real estate is a key to real power," says Woolfork. "It's the basis for most wealth, and converts into military power."

Indeed, without land in the world of "Game of Thrones," you are of little consequence.

"Everyone thinks 'Game of Thrones' is about revenge, but it's really about property," says Anderson. "You don't win anything without gaining ground, and controlling it."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com